ABSTRACT
Military health care providers (HCPs) are frequently confronted with moral challenges and obstacles in the deployed context that have the potential to cause moral distress. Though the moral distress process and its consequences for HCPs and the military organization are starting to be examined, a conceptual psychological mechanism that drives moral distress progression for the individual has not yet been discussed in the literature. The aim of this chapter is to explore the potential usefulness of the mechanism of ego-depletion as a conceptual framework for the progressive experience of unresolved moral distress and its connection to the development of mental health problems. Bradshaw and colleagues’ (2010) model of moral distress is used as a lens to assess participants’ moral distress process and to evaluate the applicability of ego-depletion using a combined inductive and deductive coding approach and descriptive qualitative analysis. Military HCPs’ narratives indicated support for the efficacy of an ego-depletion framework as the experience of moral distress necessitated the use of executive functions, which taxed limited personal resources and led to compromised normal functioning. Furthermore, results suggested that experiencing unresolved or chronic moral distress leads to a severely depleted state and a cumulative progression of negative consequences for participants, including mental health problems, through an ongoing self-regulatory feedback loop. As such, further practical research is recommended to explore and firmly establish ego-depletion as a psychological mechanism for moral distress in a model for military HCPs and its association with mental health.
